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Guiding Questions
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How do we best understand the histories and cultures of
the Sioux, Ojibwe, and Métis peoples of the Red River Valley
and its environs in the second half of the 19th century?
What caused the Métis diaspora?
Why did Marguerite, Aiken, Felix, Louis, & other
members of their family & community to migrate to
St Paul, then Anoka, then Minneapolis from the late 1840s
to the late 1870s? What were the larger social and
cultural contexts that shaped the lives of the people on
whom we're focusing in these pages? |
Introduction
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This page represents
our first stab at coming to grips with our abysmal ignorance about
the early history of St. Paul, the Red
River Valley, and all the points in between.
Even though we grew up in St.
Paul, until recently we remained scandalously ill-informed about the
city and region's colorful past. You could fit into one of
Grandma's thimbles everything we learned as kids about the history of
the Métis and Native
peoples and cultures of the Red River Valley and its environs.
Same with the history of St Paul,
nearby Fort Snelling, and a bit upriver, the village of St Anthony
Falls, soon to become Minneapolis. Fortunately for us, it's never too late to learn.
(Detail of 1854 plat map showing the village of
St Paul, Minnesota Territory, www.mhs.org)
Right now this page is still
embryonic; there's a lot of holes and research and writing yet to do
before it begins to take shape. But it's a start.
We begin with excerpts from a broad-ranging
and critically acclaimed piece of scholarship by the historical
geographer D. W. Meinig that help to situate the early history of St Paul and
the Red River Valley within the broader context of the struggles for
empire between Britain and the United States that were shaping North
America in the 1840s and 1850s. We then move forward in time and
(at this point) present a hodgepodge of items that we hope will prove
useful in addressing the questions posed above.
Meanwhile,
if you want to
listen to a cheesy but endearing version of the melody of the song
Remember the Red River Valley while you read this page, go offsite
to
http://www.niehs.nih.gov/kids/lyrics/redriver.htm).
The Big Picture:
British and American
Contests for Empire in North America in the 18th and 19th Centuries
To summarize Meinig's argument, the early 1800s saw across North
America an intensification of struggles for land and commerce among
the rapidly growing United States, the colonies of Upper and Lower
Canada, and Native peoples. The Canadas (Upper and Lower), centered on the St
Lawrence River and oriented toward Britain, were the focal point of
trading networks that extended across vast stretches of North America,
especially Rupert's Land, controlled by Hudson's Bay Company. From
Ontario to Oregon, the Americans and British waged their contest for
land, trade, and empire -- against both each other and the many Indian
groups trying to hang onto their ancestral lands and lifeways.
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The North American West,
from D. W. Meinig, The Shaping of America, vol. 2, p. 64.
Note "Rupert's Land" (a vast concession controlled by the Hudson's Bay
Company) to the north of the U.S.-claimed Louisiana Territory.
Note also the "Selkirk Grant," centered on the Red River of the North
and Lake of the Woods. This area was sometimes called
"Assiniboia," named after the river that flows into the Red River west
of the Lake of the Woods.
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The Selkirk Grant, or
Assiniboia, centered on the confluence of the Assiniboine River and
the Red River of the North, from D. W. Meinig,
The Shaping of
America, vol. 2, p. 64.
Meinig first traces this conflict across North America from the
early 1500s to the early 1800s. After detailing the history of the
Pacific Northwest and the fallout from the War of 1812, he turns to the region that later became the
Minnesota Territory (1849) and the State of Minnesota (May 1858).
The late 1840s
and early 1850s, Meinig shows, was a period of major changes across the
region, especially in the Red River Valley and St. Paul. The
rapidly growing settlement on the Mississippi River, oriented southward
toward Prairie du
 Chien,
St. Louis, and New Orleans, was ideally located to attract the trade and
commerce of the Red River -- a river flowing north, not south, emptying into the Lake of the Woods (sometimes
called the "sixth Great Lake"), which in turn flows into Lake Superior,
waterway to the
Atlantic. A ribbon of settlements was strung out along the Red River,
at the southern tip of which lay the town of Pembina.
(Sketch of Pembina settlement, Red River, John
Fleming, 1857, www.telusplanet.net)
In the mid-1840s, enterprising traders and merchants
in St. Paul
saw an opportunity in opening overland cart-trade with Pembina, and they
took it. Residents of the Red River also saw many advantages in
redirecting their trade southward. The end result was that Pembina
stopped looking north and started looking south -- away from the French
trade networks in the Great Lakes and Canada, and toward the the
Mississippi River and the network of roads and railways linking the
Upper Mississippi to markets in the South and East.
(Métis cart traders resting along the trail
between Pembina & St Paul, ca. 1855, www.telusplanet.net)
In 1845, Bailey T. Baldwin, 25 years old and recently arrived
from Alabama, was among the small but growing number of enterprising
traders to take advantage of this growing overland cart-trade between
St. Paul and Pembina.
 From D. W. Meinig,
The Shaping of America: A Geographical
Perspective on 500 Years of History, vol. 2, Continental America,
1800-1867 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), pp.
220-222.
Assiniboia
Tensions among the Hudson's Bay
Company,
the
British government, and settlers arising from uneasiness
over American pressures along the international boundary
were not confined to the Northwest Coast. In the Red
River Basin, American traders became much more aggressive in
luring trade from Assiniboia to markets south of the border.
By the early 1840s rival American and Hudson's Bay Company
posts were spaced along the boundary from Grand Portage to
Turtle Mountain. Pembina, the old métis cluster on Red
River just south of the line, was the main focus of tensions
(fig. 14).
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Map from D. W. Meinig,
The Shaping of America,
vol. 2. p. 121.
The Hudson's Bay Company
attempted to enforce its monopoly over all fur trade within its
territories, but American traders paid two to four times the price for
furs and robes and the métis had no strong allegiance to the company.
As hunters, traders, and settlers, they were indifferent to invisible
boundaries drawn across the uniformities of nature, and they were very
difficult to police.
In 1843
the first in what soon became a rapidly expanding line of Red River
carts carried a load of furs and robes from Pembina to Mendota, a hamlet
in the shadow of Fort Snelling, the American military post on the upper
Mississippi. A loose cluster of settlements had grown up here
around the mouth of the Minnesota River and the Falls of St. Anthony in
the Big Woods (mixed hardwood forest) just beyond the edge of the
prairies. The first settlers here were in fact Selkirk Colony
refugees: métis, and Swiss and other soldier-colonists who had
left during various difficulties in the colony. Together with the
American Fur Company personnel (many of whom were Scots or French of
Canadian origins) such people made this connection a natural social and
commercial link without strongly conscious political implications.
In 1844
the Hudson's Bay Company attempted to stamp out this illegal diversion,
and as tensions with the United States over Oregon and other issues
flared, three companies of British soldiers were sent to Assiniboia by
way of York Factory and gave tacit military support to the company's
house searches, seizures, and other efforts to suppress smuggling (the
company even tried to insist on inspecting all mail). When the
international situation eased, these soldiers were withdrawn, and a year
later a body of armed métis so directly intimidated the local court in
the trial of a convicted smuggler that no punishment was exacted.
From this point on the company gave up its enforcement campaign, and
this de facto end of its trading monopoly in Assiniboia was recognized
and celebrated on both sides of the border.
At midcentury
the geopolitical future of Assiniboia was quite uncertain and attracting
a variety of interests. It was a considerably more substantial
colony with an obviously greater potential than had been apparent in the
Selkirk days. More than 5,000 settlers were aligned in their
narrow lots along the Red River all the way to the border and along the
Assiniboine to Portage la Prairie (edging there into higher, drier soils
that were proving good for grain). It was still very remote and
facilities were limited, but there were mills (including several
windmills) and an agricultural improvement society, a public library,
and more schools and churches (the Roman Catholics and the Anglicans
each had a cathedral here serving an extensive diocese), and there was a
nucleus of educated leaders among the Scots, English, French Canadians,
and metis who were beginning to look beyond the fading paternalism of
the Hudson's Bay Company toward some other political arrangement.
One possibility
was the creation of a British
Crown Colony, as had just been done for Vancouver Island, maintaining
the Red River--Hudson Bay--London link as a direct governmental, rather
than company, tie. However, despite the continuance of that old
commercial orientation, by the 1850s much the most flourishing link was
south to St. Paul. Every year now several hundred Red River carts
screeched across the plains to that booming town below the falls
(declared by a British visitor to be "the best specimen to be found in
the States of a town still in its infancy with a great future before
it"), where the steamboats came upriver from Prairie du Chien, Dubuque,
or Galena serving the settlers surging up the Mississippi in the wake of
the withdrawal of the Sioux from the Big Woods and adjacent prairies of
the new Territory of Minnesota (1849).
Mail, machinery, and all manner of
goods could be brought
to Pembina and Assiniboia far more efficiently than by the laborious old
waterways of the northern woods, and the facilities were being extended
and improved every year. Railroads were reaching west from
Chicago, steamboats began coming all the way up from St. Louis, and a
stage line connected St. Paul to Sauk Rapids.
In 1855
George Simpson reluctantly reported to the governor and committee that
the New York--St. Paul route would now prove far superior to York
Factory for the Venerable Company itself even though it risked the
interception of the fur business by the American metropolis. And
the booming sales at the Sauk Rapids land office were portentous for a
vast region. The territory of Wisconsin, created in 1836 and
admitted as a state twelve years later, now had more than 300,000
citizens, and the geopolitical implications of that wave spreading into
Minnesota became a matter of intense speculation on both sides of the
international line. . . .
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Thus
we see that by the mid-1850s, the Red River Valley's
re-orientation southward, away from the Great Lakes and toward St Paul, was well underway. Bailey & Margaret
Baldwin and their families were an intimate part of this larger process.
In fact they lived it.
From Northern
Alabama to Northern Minnesota
These
contexts established,
let's go further back in time, to the
place of Bailey T. Baldwin's birth.
Bailey said in his pension papers
that he was born in "Madison City," Alabama in 1820.
Below appears a section of one of
Meinig's maps showing the Southern United States in the early 1800s,
with the location of "Madison City" indicated (called
"Madison Crossroads" in an 1895 atlas, a tiny hamlet in the northern Alabama piedmont,
just north of the Tennessee River, in
what is now Madison County. Bailey must've had a wicked sense of
humor to call his birthplace a "city").
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Excerpt of map of the "Southern Borderlands" of
North America, with "Madison City," Alabama, indicated; adapted from D.
W. Meinig, The Shaping of America, p. 25
The little finger of land jutting into the Tennessee-Alabama
borderlands shows that the area around Bailey's hometown was just
starting to be
settled by Anglo Americans around 1820, the year of Bailey's birth.
Note, too, the tremendous complexity of the period -- which this map
vastly (and necessarily) oversimplifies -- with competing
claims for land by Anglos, numerous Indian groups, and the Spanish.
In 1803, less than 20 years before Bailey's birth, the vast French
territory of Louisiana was purchased by the United States, effectively
doubling the size of the young Republic.
Recall that Bailey T. Baldwin was born around 1819. This was
immediately after a series of extremely violent and tumultuous episodes
throughout this region. Here we present an excerpt from a standard
college textbook on US history summarizing these very complex events:
Patterns of Armed Resistance: The Shawnee and the Creek
Not all tribes of the interior
proved so accommodating to white expansion [as the
Cherokee]. Faced with growing threats to their
political and cultural survival, the Shawnee and Creek
nations rose in armed resistance. Conflict was
smoldering as the nineteenth century began; it burst into
open flame during the War of 1812.
In the late 1780s, chieftains such as Little Turtle of the
Miami and Blue Jacket of the Shawnee had led a series of
devastating raids across Indiana, Ohio, and western
Pennsylvania, creating panic among white settlers and openly
challenging the federal government's control of the Old
Northwest. After two failed federal efforts to quell
the uprising had failed, President Washington determined to
smash the Indians' resistance once and for all. In the
autumn of 1793, General Anthony Wayne led a new army of
conquest into the Ohio wilderness. The following year,
Wayne's army clashed with over 2,000 Indian warriors in the
decisive Battle of Fallen Timbers. After the smoke of
the battle had cleared, Wayne wrung from the defeated chiefs
the Treaty of Greenville an agreement ceding the southern
two-thirds of Ohio. It was the largest single transfer
of Indian land yet, and it opened the heart of the Old
Northwest to white control.
In subsequent years, additional treaties further reduced the
Indians' land base, driving the Shawnee and Delaware, the
Miami and Wyandotte more tightly in upon each other.
By 1809, two Shawnee leaders, the brothers Tecumseh
and Elskwatawa, the latter known to whites as 'the Prophet,'
were traveling among the region's tribes warning of their
common dangers and forging an alliance against the invading
whites. They established headquarters at an ancient
Indian town named Kithitippecanoe in northern Indiana.
Soon it became a gathering point for Native Americans across
the entire region as they responded to the messages of
cultural pride, land retention, and pan-Indian resistance
presented by the Shawnee brothers.
Between 1809 and 1811, Tecumseh carried his message of
Indian nationalism and military resistance south the the
Creek and Cherokee. His speeches rang with bitter
denunciations of white Americans. "The white race is a
wicked race," he told his listeners. "Since the
days when the white race first came in contact with the red
men, there has been a continual series of aggressions.
The hunting grounds are fast disappearing, and they are
driving the red men farther and farther to the west . . .
The only hope . . . is a war of extermination against the
paleface." The southern tribes refused to join, but by
1811, over 1,000 fighting men had gathered at Kithtippecanoe.
Alarmed by the Indians' growing militancy, the governor of
the Indiana Territory, William Henry Harrison, surrounded
the Indian stronghold with a force of 1,000 soldiers.
He carried with him full authority from the secretary of war
to do whatever was necessary to secure the frontier.
At dawn on November 7, 1811, 400 Indian warriors assaulted
Harrison's lines. For hours the battle raged, and at
day's end Harrison counted over 150 warriors dead and
countless others wounded. Before retiring to the
territorial capital at Vincennes, he burned Kithtippecanoe
to the ground.
Over the next several months, Tecumseh's followers, taking
advantage of the recent outbreak of the War of 1812 between
the United States and England and aided by British troops
from Canada, carried out devastating raids across Indiana
and southern Michigan. Together they crushed American
armies at Detroit and Fort Nelson and followed up with
forays against Fort Wayne. At the Battle of the Thames
near Detroit, the tide turned, for there Harrison inflicted
a grievous defeat on a combined British and Indian force.
Among those slain was Tecumseh.
The American victory at the Thames signaled the collapse of
Tecumseh's confederacy and an end to Indian resistance in
the Old Northwest. Beginning in 1815, American setters
surged once more across Ohio and Indiana, only now they
pressed on into Illinois and Michigan. The balance of
power in the Old Northwest had permanently shifted.
To the south, the Creek challenged white intruders with
similar militancy. As the nineteenth century began,
white settlers were pushing onto Creek lands in northwestern
Georgia and central Alabama. While some Creek leaders
urged accommodation, others, called Red Sticks, prepared to
fight. The embers of this smoldering conflict were
fanned into flame by an aggressive Tennessee militia
commander named Andrew Jackson. Citing Creek
atrocities "which bring fresh to our recollection the
influence . . . that raised the scalping knife and tomahawk
against our defenseless women and children," Jackson in 1808
urged President Jefferson to endorse a campaign against the
Creek. The Tennessee militia, Jackson reported, "pant
for the orders of our government to punish a ruthless foe."
Bristling at their treatment by Georgia and Alabama, the Red
Sticks carried out a series of frontier raids in the spring
and summer of 1813, killing and scalping two white families
and taking one woman captive. They capped their
campaign with an assault on Fort Mims on the Alabama River,
where they killed as many as 500 people, women and children
among them. News of that tragedy raised bitter cries
for revenge. The Tennessee legislature denounced the
"horrid and inhuman murders" and called for proper
"atonement," while frontier editors warned that "when the
tomahawk and the scalping knife are drawn in the cabins of
our peaceful and unsuspecting citizens, it is time, high
time to prepare . . . for defense."
At the head of 5,000 Tennessee and Kentucky militia,
augmented by Cherokee, Choctaw, and Chickasaw warriors eager
to punish their traditional Creek enemies, Jackson launched
his long-awaited attack. As he moved south, the
ferocity of the fighting grew. David Crockett, one of
Jackson's soldiers, later reported that the militia
volunteers shot down the Red Sticks "like dogs." The
Indians gave like measure in return.
The climactic battle of the Creek War came in March 1814 at
Horseshoe Bend, on the Tallapoosa River in central Alabama.
There in the fortified town of Tohopeka, 1,000 Creek
warriors made their stand against 1,400 state troops and 600
Cherokee allies. While American cannonfire raked the
Creek defenses, the allied Cherokee crossed the river to cut
off retreat. In the battle that followed, over 800
Native Americans died, more than in any other single battle
in the history of Indian-white warfare. Jackson
followed up his victory with a scorched-earth sweep through
the remaining Red Stick towns. With no hope left, Red
Eagle, one of the few remaining Red Stick leaders, walked
alone into Jackson's camp and addressed the American
commander:
"General
Jackson, I am not afraid of you. I fear no man,
for I am a Creek warrior. I have nothing to
request in behalf of myself; you can kill me if you
desire. But I come to beg you to send for the
women and children of the war party, who are now
starving in the woods . . . I am now done fighting."
The Creek war was finished, and Jackson allowed Red Eagle to
return home.
But the general was not quite done. In August 1814 he
exacted his final revenge by constructing Fort Jackson on
the Hickory Ground, the most sacred spot of the Creek
nation. Over the following months, he seized 22
million acres, nearly two-thirds of the Creek domain.
Before his Indian-fighting days were over, Jackson would
acquire for the United States through treaty and military
conquest nearly three-fourths of Alabama and Florida, a
third of Tennessee, and a fifth of Georgia and Mississippi.
Just as Tecumseh's death had signaled the end of Indian
resistance in the North, so the Creek's defeat at Horseshoe
Bend broke the back of Indian defenses in the South.
With all possibility of armed resistance gone, the Native
Americans of the Old Southeast gave way before the swelling
tide of white settlement.
From Gary B.
Nash, et al., The American People: Creating a Nation and a
Society, 3rd ed. (New York: HarperCollins, 1994), pp.
302-304.
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The world into which Bailey T. Baldwin was born
in the year 1819 was in the midst of
profound and wrenching changes. Indian resistance to white land
encroachment had just been crushed, and white immigrant families
streamed into the region.
It is this history of Indian
resistance and white land encroachment, along with other evidence, that
leads us to suspect that Bailey may well have been part Native American
Indian, perhaps Creek or Cherokee, and that his middle name was actually
Tecumseh -- Bailey Tecumseh Baldwin.
In the first half of the 1800s, the
Red River Valley comprised the northernmost fringe of this vast
Louisiana Territory. The valley itself was inhabited by an
ethnic amalgam of Indians, French and other Europeans, and Métis, or
people of mixed French-Indian ancestry (both Ojibwe and Dakota [or
Sioux] Métis). As Meinig describes, by
1850 the valley's population of 5,000 was growing rapidly, its most
recent Euro-American settlers building mills, schools, churches, a
library, and other public facilities. Most of the valley's
inhabitants
were poised to follow whatever economic and political path seemed best,
and the route to St Paul offered to many a host of advantages over the old
routes downriver, to the Lake of the Woods, and the Canadas.
All this helps put into broader perspective
the passages in the
Modern Leather-Stocking
Tale that describe Bailey & Margaret's early years in
Minnesota Territory. As we read in the article, Marguerite Bleau
dit Rossignal (later Margaret Rushenall, or Margaret Baldwin)
" .
. . was born near the Red River of the North, and her grandmothers
on both sides were full-blooded Chippewas married to French husbands."
Tintype of Margaret
Rushenall Baldwin at Fort Abercrombie, Dakota Territory, summer
1862. Photograph courtesy of Jeane Morneau DeCoursey.
The dramatic story of young Marguerite's foot journey to Pembina
from St. Paul and back again in the fall of 1847, to fetch her family
and bring them to St Paul, was thus part of a larger process of
migration from the Red River Valley to the rapidly growing settlement
along the Mississippi River -- all part of a larger reorientation of the
Red River settlements away from Canada and toward St Paul and points south.
In the year 1846,
as we read in the "Modern Leather-Stocking Tale," 23 year-old
Marguerite Bleau dit Rossignal
.
. . found enough inducement in St. Paul to
wish to remain there during the winter, at least, and she resolved
to return to Manitoba to bring her family. She would like to
have company on the journey back, but there was no one going north,
and she must do it alone or give up her project. It was not
possible to hire a dog train, which was then the chief method of
conveyance from one point to another, so she determined to walk to
Manitoba alone. It was a distance of 600 miles. . . .
[Marguerite] at last reached Manitoba. She . . . went to
Pembina, where she found her father and mother and brothers and
sister. She prevailed upon them to return with her. They
hitched up one little cart in which the small children could ride,
and they walked back to St. Paul. That was the fall of 1847.
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Three years later, in 1850, the U.S. census would show Margaret
Bleau and her family living in St. Paul. Of course, they wouldn't
have been there had Margaret not made this extraordinary 600-mile foot journey to
fetch them:
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Excerpt from the 1850
census, showing Margaret Bleau dit Rosignal and her family in
St. Paul, Minnesota Territory
Meinig's account also helps us to
better understand what the
strapping 25 year-old Bailey T. Baldwin encountered when he arrived in
Minnesota Territory from the conflict-ridden zones of northern Alabama.
Again we read from the "Modern Leather-Stocking Tale":
In the spring of 1845 B. T. Baldwin was among those who came
from the South to the new trading post at St. Paul. He had lived in
Alabama, brought up among the Southerners of the Southland, and he
was eager to try his luck in the North, even though his fortunes
should be among the much dreaded Indians. Six years later, in 1851,
he wooed and won the widow of Bazill Bottineau [Marguerite Bleau dit
Rosignal Bottineau], and he gave her little son a home with her.
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Bailey T. Baldwin, 5' 11" tall and of robust constitution,
worked as an overland trader between the Red River settlements and
St. Paul for at least ten or eleven years, from his
arrival in 1845 until at least 1856, as we read in the following
passages from the "Modern Leather-Stocking Tale":
In
the year '56 Baldwin fitted up a train of goods, and
with his wife and children went north to Pembina to
trade for furs with the Indians. Margaret Baldwin
was ill during the winter, and she was anxious to come
back to St. Paul. The collector of customs, who
was making ready to come to St. Paul with a dog team,
offered to take Mrs. Baldwin with him, and told Baldwin
that if he would remain and be the deputy collector and
postmaster he would see the wife safe home. They
started with three dogs hauling the woman and two
children, and two dogs to haul the baggage and
provisions. They were driven by one of her
brothers to Crow Wing, where they took the stage for St.
Paul. Baldwin paid $50 for the five dogs to carry
his wife and babies, at the same time 18 or 20 dog
trains made the trip, so there was no lack of company.
The dogs returned to Pembina loaded with goods.
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Photograph of Red River
trading carts loading at a trading house in St Paul, Minnesota
Territory, 1854. By this time, Bailey T. Baldwin had spent
nearly a decade making the circuit between Pembina and St Paul.
It is possible, if exceedingly unlikely, that one of the individuals
portrayed in this photograph is Bailey T. Baldwin. From www.mhs.org.
Indian Wars & Treaties in Minnesota, 1850s-1870s
In 1851,
three years before the above photo was taken,
an infamous series of treaties between the federal government and the
Dakota Indians of Minnesota accelerated the process of usurping Dakota
Indian lands
east and south of the Red River Valley. As we read in the
following excerpt from the e-museum of Minnesota State University at
Mankato:
Treaties concluded at Traverse des Sioux and Mendota with the Dakota
Indians whereby the Dakota ceded their lands east of the Red River,
Lake Traverse, and the Big Dakota River and south of a boundary line
between the Dakota and Chippewa in 1825. In return the Dakota
received $1,665,000 US, $1,360,000 of which was set into a trust
fund, of which the interest would be distributed to chiefs partly in
cash, partly in supplies, and partly in education and civilization
funds. The vast majority ended up being used to pay off Indian debts
to white traders.
(quoted from www.mnsu.edu/emuseum)
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This was all part of a larger process
by which the federal
government forcibly usurped Indian
lands in the years and decades after the Revolutionary War and, in
Louisiana and later Minnesota Territory, after the War of
1812. The government's failure to fulfill its
part of the bargain in these and other treaties led directly to the
Great Sioux Indian Uprising of 1862, in which Margaret & Bailey Baldwin
played a direct if marginal role from besieged Fort Abercrombie on the
Red River, not far from Pembina.
This process of usurping Indian lands
in 19th century Minnesota
is summarized graphically in the following map:
Dispossession of Indian Lands in Minnesota, 1837-1889, following
treaties between the federal government and diverse Indian groups, from www.kstrom.net/isk/maps/mn/treaties.html. Copyright 1997 by
Paula Giese.
Below are thumbnails of the 1851 treaty between the federal
government and the Sisseton and Wahpeton Bands of the Dakota:
1851 Treaty between the the
Sisseton and Wahpeton Dakota and the US government, from the
Oklahoma State University Library
URL: http://digital.library.okstate.edu/kappler/. Click on
images for larger view.
And the 1851 treaty with the Mdewakanton and Wahpakoota Dakota:
1851 Treaty between the the
Mdewakanton and Wahpakoota Dakota and the US government, from the
Oklahoma State University Library
URL: http://digital.library.okstate.edu/kappler/. Click on
images for larger view.
In the wake of these and other treaties,
and especially the
federal government's abject failure to adhere to the treaties'
provisions, the stage was set for a new generation of radical Dakota leaders to take
advantage the eruption of a civil war between white people (the Civil
War) to launch a rebellion and, they hoped, expel the white people once
and for all and
regain their lands and dignity.
These, in a nutshell, are the origins of the Great Sioux Uprising
of 1862.
Meanwhile,
for white settlers land was plentiful. On April 3, 1857, five
years before the Great Sioux Uprising, Bailey T. Baldwin purchased from the
federal government 83 acres just outside Stillwater, a
small hamlet east of St Paul along the St. Croix River, as seen in the
following document kindly provided by Ruthanne Fresonke:
Grant of "the west half of the northwest
quarter of Section 31 in Township 32 north of Range 21, west, in
the district of lands subject to sale at Stillwater, Territory
of Minnesota" to Bailey T. Baldwin and George Worts, 3 April
1857. Document courtesy of Ruthanne Fresonke. Click on
image for larger view.
What Bailey ended up doing with this land
is anyone's guess. He probably sold it soon after, so he could
purchase another parcel in Anoka, along the Mississippi River
north of St Paul.
Panoramic Map of Anoka, MN, 1869
Why do we say that?
Because the 1860 census shows Bailey, Margaret, and their extended
family -- including Aiken and Felix Bleau -- along with a slew of other French-Canadians, living and working
as farmers in Columbus Township, Anoka. In the late 1850s, Anoka
became a magnet for the French-Indian population displaced from Pembina
and the Red River, as suggested in the City of Centerville's official
(and sanitized) account of the city's early history:
Centerville honors its history and
heritage
This was the main rest stop
between Stillwater and Anoka in the earliest days of the
Minnesota territory. Today, we celebrate Centerville's
rich French-Canadian heritage at the annual summer
celebration called Fete des Lacs, which is French for
Festival of Lakes. Residents and visitors gather at
festival activities all over town to eat, dance, watch a
parade, play softball and watch fireworks. . . .
Before the French-Canadian settlers established the
town of Centerville in the mid-1800's, Dakota Indians
lived here in the 1600s and 1700s. At that time, this
area was covered with dense woodlands and many square
miles of marshes, lakes, and waterways.
The natural habitat provided the Dakota with an
abundant food supply, including wild rice and a wide
variety of game and fish. They traveled the waterways by
canoe, reaching the St. Croix River to the east and the
Mississippi River to the west.
The Dakotas abandoned their settlement in the late
1700's, but returned annually to harvest wild rice. The
French-Canadian settlers found burial mounds and
artifacts. Many items were excavated and removed from
the area before they could be studied.
In the 1940s,
archaeologist Harold Kohlepp examined and recorded over
a thousand artifacts that still remained in Centerville,
including pottery, tools, and arrowheads. He published
his findings in an archeology journal, with Centerville
featured on the cover.
French-Canadian Settlement
The abundance of wildlife attracted many trappers
and hunters in the early 1800s. In 1850, F. W. Traves
built the first house here. Soon after, families from
Canada arrived and settled here because it reminded them
of their former homeland [and because the violent
usurpation of their ancestral lands by land-hungry
settlers and the federal
government left them few other viable options -- MJS].
Several descendants of these original French-Canadian
settlers still live in Centerville.
In 1854, settlers Peltier, LaValle, and LaMotte laid
out and platted the town. They chose the name
Centerville because of its central location from St.
Paul, Stillwater, and Anoka. The city was officially
established on August 11, 1857, when Minnesota was still
a territory.
The downtown area of Centerville was originally
known as the French Section. German immigrants settled
farther to the west in what is now part of the city of
Lino Lakes. The pioneers cleared the land for farming
and agriculture, which became the focus of the area's
economy. Businesses that supported agriculture
followed. Residents formed the Church of St. Genevieve
of Paris. . . .
(Adapted from City of Centerville,
www.centervillemn.com)
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Sadly, this is among the most detailed
descriptions of Anoka's history that can be found on the Web, and it's
not much. We need to learn more about Anoka County's history from
the 1840s to the 1870s -- especially eastern Anoka County and the
townships of Columbus and Centerville.
The following
map helps us to visualize the spatial relationships between
Centerville, St. Paul, Stillwater, and Northeast Minneapolis -- the
latter where Bailey & Margaret lived from the early to mid-1870s until
their deaths:
Adapted from an 1895 atlas, showing the
spatial relationship between places significant in the lives &
times of Bailey T. & Margaret Baldwin from the 1840s until their
deaths.
The year 1860 saw Bailey, Margaret, their two children Lucy and
William, and Margaret's brothers Aiken and Felix Bleau (along with one Charles
Baldwin) living in Columbus Township, Anoka County (just north of
Centerville):
.jpg)
Excerpt of 1860
census showing Bailey & Margaret Baldwin & family in Columbus
Twp, Anoka County MN; click on image for larger view.
Then came the Civil War,
Bailey's
enlistment, the Great Sioux Indian Uprising, and all of the dramatic
events of the 1860s, explored in greater detail in the
bailey t. baldwin pension file
and other items relating to the Civil War on the
documents page.
One result of the Great
Uprising was another treaty -- the Treaty with the Chippewa --
Red Lake and Pembina Bands of 1863 -- often called the
Pembina Treaty.
Here is the full text:
Pembina Treaty. 1863 Treaty between the Chippewa -- Red Lake
and Pembina Bands and the U.S. Government, from the Oklahoma State
University Library
URL: http://digital.library.okstate.edu/kappler/. Click on
images for larger view.
(Note that
Pierre Bottineau, the brother-in-law of Margaret Bleau dit
Rossignal Bottineau Baldwin, was a signatory to this treaty -- not as a
tribal leader but as a kind of intermediary between white people and
Indian peoples, and as witness to the event.)
Article 8 of this
1863 treaty reads in part:
It is
hereby agreed that the United States shall grant to each adult male
half-breed or mixed-blood who is related by blood to the said Chippewas of the said Red Lake or Pembina Bands who has adopted the
habits and customs of civilized life, and who is a citizen of the
United States, a homestead of one hundred and sixty acres of land .
. .
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This is the section of the Pembina Treaty
that explains Margaret Baldwin's receipt
of three pieces of "Halfbreed Scrip,"
for 160 acres each, in March 1873 and April 1874. According to
documents housed in the National Archives, the federal government
issued to Margaret Baldwin "Halfbreed Scrip No. 145" on March 15, 1873,
and "Halfbreed Scrip No. 351" on April 21, 1874 -- each piece of scrip
worth 160 acres of land -- as documented on www.ojibwe.info, a website
devoted to Ojibwe [Chippewa] genealogy:
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Rasignol, Margaret Blue Baldwin
Birth Date: about 1823
Death Date: 31
March 1900 (77 years old)
Note: NAME: Bottineau, Margaret (ABT
1823 - March 31, 1900) [VRA #12s]
Note: NAME: Baldwin, Margaret (WE-3304)
[Powell 8/0059]
Note: NAME: Rasignol, Margaret [R.L.
Scrip #145/heir & 373/heir]
Note: GENEALOGY: Minnesota Historical
Society, R.J. Powell Papers, Microf. M-455, Roll 8, Powell Genealogies
Note: "HALFBREED"_LAND_SCRIP: National
Archives, RG 75, Entry 363, "List of Persons to Whom Scrip was Issued under Red Lake & Pembina
Treaties...." Halfbreed Scrip No. 351 issued April 21,
1874, under the authority of Secretarial Decision, April 18,
1874, delivered April 21, 1874
[notation: heir of Blow, Antoine Sr."]; Halfbreed Scrip No. 145 issued to
Margaret Rasignole, heir of Augustin, March 14, 1873, under the
authority of Secretarial Decision, March 8, 1873, delivered
March 15, 1873; and Halfbreed Scrip No.
373 issued to Margaret Rasignole, heir of Joseph, on April 21,
1874, under the authority of Secretarial Decision, April 18, 1974, delivered APR 21, 1874.
Note: "HALFBREED"_LAND_SCRIP: National
Archives, RG 75, Entry 364, "Treaty of April 12, 1864, Red Lake
and Pembina Half-Breeds," Scrip Stubs, Number 351, dated April
21, 1874, 160 Acres, delivered April 21, 1874,
issued to "Margaret Blow, heir of Antoine Sr.," delivered to Agt. Douglass
Note: "HALFBREED"_LAND_SCRIP: National
Archives, RG 75, Entry 364, "Treaty of April 12, 1864, Red Lake
and Pembina Half-Breeds," Scrip Stubs, Number 145 [checked],
dated March 14, 1873, 160 Acres, delivered March 15, 1873, issued to "Margaret Rasignole, heir of Augustin Rasignole,"
delivered to Agt. E.P. Smith; and Number 373, dated April 21,
1874, 160 Acres, delivered April 21, 1874, issued to "Margaret Rasignole, heir of Joseph,"
delivered to Agt. Douglass
Note: GENEALOGY COMPILED BY VIRGINIA ROGERS:
Ah-Dick Songab Genealogy, #12, she was Original Allottee 3304 (WE-3304) on the White
Earth Reservation, MN
Note: NAME: Blow, Margaret [R.L. Scrip]
Note: NAME: Blow, Margaret [R.L. Scrip]
Note: NAME: Baldwin, Margaret (ABT
1823 - March 31, 1900) [VRA #12s]
Note: NAME: Blue, Margaret (ABT
1823 - March 31, 1900) [VRA #12s]
Note: NAME: Rasignol, Margaret (ABT
1823 - March 31, 1900) [VRA #12s] [R.L. Scrip #351/heir]
Reference: WE-3304
Source: Adapted from www.Ojibwe.Info, a site devoted to Ojibwe [Chippewa] genealogy
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This
whole half-breed scrip business is
explored at some length
here.
Within a few short years Bailey,
Margaret, and their family would give up their rural farming life and
move to the grit and grime of rapidly developing Northeast Minneapolis,
where they lived for the rest of their lives.
The Red River Rebellion, 1869-1870
Around the same time,
major changes were afoot in the Red River Valley. In the box below
we cite the Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online on Louis Riel
and the Red River Rebellion of 1869-1870:
Following is an article on the Riel
Rebellion from the Journal of Canadian Studies, Summer 1995, by
James Patterson Smith:
And here is a link
to a pretty extensive e-book
collection at the University of Calgary, many of which deal directly
with the Red River troubles of the late 1860s and early 1870s:
http://www.digitalbookindex.com/_search/search010hstregionalcanredriverrebella.asp
Métis
Histories & Cultures
In progress . . .
the MÉtis Diaspora, 1860s-1890s
In progress . . .
Preliminary bibliography on the Métis
and the history of the Red River settlement:
Keith Wilson, Life at Red River, 1830-1860 (Toronto: Ginn and
Co., 1970)
Douglas N. Sprague, The Genealogy of the First Métis Nation: The
Development and Dispersal of the Red River Settlement, 1820-1900
(Winnipeg: Pemmican Publications, 1983)
Douglas N. Sprague, Canada and the Métis, 1869-1885, foreword
by Thomas R. Berger (Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfred Laurier University
Press, 1988)
Gerhard John Ens, Homeland to Hinterland: The Changing Worlds of
the Red River Métis in the Nineteenth Century
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996).
Spatial
representation of the Red River Métis diaspora;
www.metisstudies.ca.edu
Conclusion
We conclude with one of the
classic love songs of the nineteenth century, and one that seems to
speak directly to Marguerite
Bleau dit Rosignal Bottineau Baldwin (imagine her singing this plaintive
goodbye to her husband Basile Bottineau in the late 1840s, before his
journey West for the Hudson's Bay Company, the journey that ended in his
death . . . .)
Fur
Trade Version of the Song
"Red River Valley"
1.
From this valley they say you are going,
I will miss your sweet face and sweet smile,
Just because you are weary and tired,
You are changing your range for a while.
Chorus:
Then come sit here a while 'ere you leave me,
Do not hasten to bid me adieu
But remember the Red River Valley
And the girl that has loved you so true.
2.
I've been thinking a long time, my darling,
Of the sweet words you never would say,
Now alas, must my fond hopes all vanish?
For they say you are going away.
3.
When you think of the valley you're leaving
Oh how lonely and drear it it would be,
When think of the fond heart you're breaking
And the pain you are causing to me.
4.
From this valley they say you are going;
When you go, may your darling go too?
Would you leave her behind unprotected
When she loves no other but you?
5.
I have promised you darling that never,
Shall the words from my lips cause you pain;
And my life is still your's forever,
If you only will love me again.
6.
Must the past with it's joys be blighted
By the future of sorrow and pain,
And the vows that were spoken be slighted?
Don't you think, you can love me again?
7.
As you go to your home by the ocean
May you never forget those sweet hours
That we spent in the Red River Valley
And the love we exchanged 'mid the flowers
8.
There never could be such a longing
In the heart of a poor maiden's breast,
That dwells in the heart you are breaking
As I wait in my home in the West.
9.
And the dark maiden's prayer for her lover
To the Spirit that rules the world:
May his pathway be ever in sunshine,
Is the prayer of the Red River girl.
"Thanks to Richard Larson
of the Fraser/Brazeau Metis Clan for [these] lyrics."
from
www.wildwestweb.net/redrivervalley.html
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